


Slumber of Champions

by John_Steiner



Series: Silence of Champions [2]
Category: Fantasy - Fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-15
Updated: 2020-02-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:09:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22727425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/John_Steiner/pseuds/John_Steiner
Summary: High Priest Orius must officiate his title with a pilgrimage to a sacred shrine; a holy place not visited since the last high priest was named two hundred years prior. In it Orius comes face to face with a hero he was sure had died of his wounds before Orius was born. Confronting and confronted, Orius takes offense at the other's intrusion into the shrine, until he learns who the aged hulking warrior is.
Series: Silence of Champions [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1634284





	Slumber of Champions

Orius was named High Priest, but to formalize his title required a journey to a shrine that hadn't been visited since his predecessor had been named nearly two centuries ago.

Escorted by soldiers and accompanied by servants, Orius rode in a wagon that was more a rolling estate of baroque style decor drawn by sixteen horses. The quest to the shrine was uneventful, which surprised no one given that fully a hundred armed men accompanied Orius.

However, not one of them had ever seen the shrine in their lives, Orius included. He was disappointed when finding the wagon stopped before an old rise of stone overgrown by vines.

"Is this it?" Orius complained.

"It is, Your Grace," the captain replied from atop his horse.

The captain passed over the map he'd been using to navigate, and Orius studied it. "Oh, yes, I remember that fork in the road, and these landmarks. I suppose you're right. We have arrived."

"None of us are permitted to venture inside," the captain stated.

"Alright," Orius accepted, and looked around. "You'd better set up camp here and be sure to keep a small detachment near the entrance and see to it that none follow who are forbidden to do so."

"Very good, Your Grace," the captain acknowledged, and then reined his horse around to repeat Orius' orders.

No ritual was laid out for Orius to follow once he was inside, and so he assumed that he would simply invoke a prayer to the gods while kneeling in the antechamber. Traipsing up stone steps and brushing aside growth, Orius picked his way up the front of the shrine.

At the archway he saw signs that there used to be large double doors, but that the wood had long rotted and crumbled, with the barest traces of rusty hinges and no sign of any iron handles that might've been there. Being of ancient architecture, the shrine had few very small windows looking more like slits for archers.

Dust filled the air, but in the weak illumination Orius could make out engravings of mythic scenes and statues of the gods. Venturing on included walking through passages of virtual darkness, as torches were forbidden in the shrine. At last Orius came to the antechamber.

There Orius saw a great throne that he was assured would be bare. Except someone was seated. A hulking man nonetheless aged and haggard, but encumbered by weighty dull steel armor and a huge mace in the left hand. The old warrior image was still with his head hung low.

"Tis but for the glory of the gods that I am graced to be in thine hallowed halls...," Orius started to pray on bended knee.

"And who are you, to disturb my thoughtful slumber?" croaked the man Orius thought to be a statue.

"By the gods," exclaimed Orius jumping up and stepping warily back. "How dare you defile this sacred place!"

"How dare I?" the ancient man grumbled in mockery. "How dare you so bark at a senior man to yourself? Well? Explain yourself, young man!"

"I am the High Priest of the Kingdom," Orius protested, shocked as much by the old man's audacity to address him so, as by his presence in the shrine. "The very Kingdom for which this shrine stands."

"Ohh-hh," the old warrior huffed, and coughed out his amused laughter. "A kingdom that stands solely on the skulls of the slain, including its own dead warriors. A kingdom ruled by the unworthy, and held aloft by the labor of the many who see no reward."  
"Reveal your name," Orius shouted, further infuriated. "I demand it!"

"Callidan," the old man answered, and nodded thoughtfully. "That is my name, when last I knew it from the lips of others. Now, who are you-- pup? By what right do you protest another's presence?"

"Orius, High Priest of the Kingdom and advocate of same to the gods!" He hoped that alone had finality.

The scowl on the old man claiming the mantle of a hero said otherwise. "I wager you hadn't expected me in here, let alone anyone at all. Did you, pup? Surely, your fabled tales of my heroism that you imbibed deeply filled your dreams of a wholly different Callidan than the one ensconced before you."

"You can't be him," Orius griped, "Callidan was a strong man, to be sure. You, however, are built more akin to ogres. That armor I witnessed couldn't begin to cover you."

"Ahhh," the old warrior's gravelly voice drew out, and then his head jolted from amusement. "That princely armor. The sort of stuffy polished pride one would wear to the royal nursery and play soldier while wet nurses watch over them. You, priest," the aged man huffed back, rendering Orius' title an insult and went on, "have not earned your right in this place. I hold the last ground of a true kingdom with a census of one."

"I do not take your meaning," Orius said looking sideways at the man ladened with armor more than truly wearing it. "So-called Callidan."

"I see what they told you," the old man astutely judged with a critical eye in the dim light, source unknown. "Traitor to the kingdom, yes?"

"Precisely," Orius nodded slowly, now convinced of Callidan's identity. "Though, you should be dead."

"And who's to say I am not!" Growled Callidan, who then surprised Orius by rising to his feet as though unhindered, and paced before the chair he once sat in. "Bound in this cave of a shrine. You may well be right about me being an ogre or some other underworld brute. Once a man, and not even a memory to his people, banished to the dark that is the cornerstone of a kingdom I pledged myself to defend to my last breath."

"Tell me of this plot you concocted," Orius demanded, and waved a hand just as ruefully, "This republic of tribes with which you hoped to usurp His Lordship."

"Will the twisted whispers never cease," Callidan seemed to bid of the watchful god carvings adjoining the walls to the ceiling, and then Callidan looked down from the raised throne. "You believe I invented this thing by which the kingdom should be ruled. Poor boy, that is how we were ruled before your beloved Lordship banished the chieftains and ordered beheaded those who refused," Callidan spoke from seeming recollection, and nodded gravely as he added, "Next to bow before the headsman's block were the families of recalcitrant chieftains. After, came those who protested the barbarity. With the last wagging tongue answered by rolling head, your Lordship had become absolute master over the land, and the true kingdom destroyed."

"His Lordship was the rightful heir," Orius seethed.

"That he was," Callidan conceded, and resumed slumping into the throne. "Even with his Queen Mother's untimely demise," to which Callidan waved off, "Of course, this happened three centuries ago. Few are left who would remember. Those who were present and still walk the Earth are wise in seeing to their own forgetfulness."

"How is it you still live?" Orius wondered.

"You wear a stone around your neck, do you not?" Callidan asked, but didn't wait for an answer. "All nobles do, as do the priests. You received your charm on reaching your twenty-first summer and were named priest. The nobility get theirs at birth, and are forbidden to take them off since the crib. I carried such a charm from a noble slain in battle, thinking to return it to his family, but wearing it in his memory until then. Just those few years in the Vast Green Valley Campaign imbued into me longevity, though not everlasting youth. That takes a different practice. One that you, a priest could never bare witness for your celibacy."

"Explain this ritual to me," Orius demanded.

"I will leave you simply with this question," Callidan uttered from raised chin and piercing gaze. "When last have you seen the scamper of children in noble households and the cheerful delight of their laughter?"

Orius had never seen children from the great ruling houses of the Kingdom. At now forty years of age, Orius had no memory of childbirths declared from among the royals. He once recalled small gravestones in Tyrus Kaine's gardens, but had assumed them to be commemorations to lost pets.


End file.
